This he would teach, for he had won this knowledge through experience, the greatest teacher, and with much toil.

He would teach it as he had learned it, and his lectures would be founded on works which he had composed concerning inward and external treatment, physic and surgery."(11) Shortly afterwards, at the Feast of St.John, the students had a bonfire in front of the university.

Paracelsus came out holding in his hands the "Bible of medicine," Avicenna's "Canon," which he flung into the flames saying: "Into St.John's fire so that all misfortune may go into the air with the smoke." It was, as he explained afterwards, a symbolic act: "What has perished must go to the fire; it is no longer fit for use: what is true and living, that the fire cannot burn." With abundant confidence in his own capacity he proclaimed himself the legitimate monarch, the very Christ of medicine.

"You shall follow me," cried he, "you, Avicenna, Galen, Rhasis, Montagnana, Mesues; you, Gentlemen of Paris, Montpellier, Germany, Cologne, Vienna, and whomsoever the Rhine and Danube nourish; you who inhabit the isles of the sea; you, likewise, Dalmatians, Athenians; thou, Arab; thou, Greek; thou, Jew; all shall follow me, and the monarchy shall be mine."(12) (10) And men have oft grown old among their books To die case hardened in their ignorance.
-- Paracelsus, Browning.
(11) Anna M.Stoddart: Life of Paracelsus, London, 1911, pp.
95-96.
(12) Browning's Paracelsus, London, 1835, p.

206 (note).
This first great revolt against the slavish authority of the schools had little immediate effect, largely on account of the personal vagaries of the reformer--but it made men think.